Nothing to do with archaeology . . .

AlphaGalileo.org

. . . . But it's a slow news day, so here's something a bit interesting (I have an interest in prehistoric climate change, but I accept that this may not be interesting to everyone). It is being proposed that a new epoch should be named in response to the impacts of humans on climate change.

Geologists from the University of Leicester propose that humankind has so altered the Earth that it has brought about an end to one epoch of Earth’s history and marked the start of a new epoch.

Jan Zalasiewicz and Mark Williams at the University of Leicester and their colleagues on the Stratigraphy Commission of the Geological Society of London have presented their research in the journal GSA Today.

In it, they suggest humans have so changed the Earth that on the planet the Holocene epoch has ended and we have entered a new epoch - the Anthropocene.

They have identified human impact through phenomena such as:

· Transformed patterns of sediment erosion and deposition worldwide

· Major disturbances to the carbon cycle and global temperature

· Wholesale changes to the world’s plants and animals

· Ocean acidification

The scientists analysed a proposal made by Nobel Prize-winning chemist Paul Crutzen in 2002. He suggested the Earth had left the Holocene and started the Anthropocene era because of the global environmental effects of increased human population and economic development.